Archive for March, 2010

A girl who can bring any object to life with her kiss, a disease that causes people to melt into rainbow-swirling liquids, a world where people need to carry their souls around in little jars, a farmer with nails for eyes who grows a crop of human hands, a war against aliens from the afterlife, a girl who has living worlds tattooed on her arms, and a man who arrives in New York City to discover that all of the inhabitants are missing their mouths.

“Sunset with a Beard” is Carlton Mellick III’s first collection of short stories. This edition features the original 14 stories of surreal science-fiction, with five bonus stories that were cut from the original release.

Here’s an excerpt:
LEO: What kind of person reads bizarro fiction? Is there a community out there?

Patrick Wensink: I’m actually learning this right now, by going to bizarro conventions and meeting the other writers on the press. There isn’t one type of person who is into it — younger people, older people, etc., even conservatives. I think mostly it’s people who are looking for something different. My publisher says she looks for a book that will make people say, “Oh my god, I can’t believe someone made a book about this.” It has to be weird but original. Not just weird for weird’s sake.

This is a review of the new bizarro author series book “Rotten Little Animals” by Kevin Shamel, done by Christy Leigh Stewart in a Reading Rainbow parody sketch. I thought it was pretty funny so I had to post it.

It’s finally happened! The “Choose Your Own Mind-fuck Fest” series, which was originally a fake never-actually-going-to-happen-outside-of-one-book series that parodied the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” children’s books has actually become a reality. It all started with Ocean of Lard, which I co-wrote with Kevin L. Donihe. We never intended to actually create a new series with this book, which is why the book is #17 in the series rather than #1. But now it has happened. Numbers 1-16 are to be coming out in random order, starting with #3: “Super Giant Monster Time!” by Jeff Burk. I do plan to write more books in this series, as will several other bizarro writers and possibly some horror writers. But as with all series, the continuation of this depends on the success of the most currently released book, so if you’d like to see more bizarro Choose Your Own Adventure parodies in the future then check this one out now:

Super Giant Monster Time!
(Choose Your Own Mind Fuck Fest #3)

by Jeff Burk

illustrated by Chrissy Horchheimer

Will you escape the giant monsters that are rampaging the fuck out of your city?

Aliens are invading the Earth and their ray guns turn people into violent punk rockers. At the same time, the city is being overtaken by giant monsters tougher than Godzilla and Mothra combined. You can choose to be a lone scientist trapped in a secret government lab on a remote island swarming with monstrous killer insects, a badass punk rock chick with a green mohawk caught in a bar room brawl as the city goes up in flames around her, or a desk jockey forced to endure tedious office duties while his building is being attacked by a gargantuan centipede with claws the size of sports utility vehicles. Which character will you become?

To become the scientist, turn to page 149. To become the punk chick, turn to page 11. To become the office drone, turn to page 77. But choose wisely! You might conquer a fleet of alien saucers with the help of a high-flying monster-slicing super cat or drown in a giant monster’s pool of sperm as it butt-fucks your office building.

What will happen next? That’s up to you! When the story hits a fork in the road, you get to choose which path to take. The ending will always be different depending on your decisions. Not only that, you can read
this book over and over again for a new experience every time!

Pages

"Carlton Mellick III has the craziest book titles... and the kinkiest fans!"

—Christopher Moore

"Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction's most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale."

—Cory Doctorow

CARLTON MELLICK III is the Wonderland Book Award-winning author of over 45 novels, including Quicksand House, Bio Melt, Cuddly Holocaust and Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland. In 2013, he was named one of the top 20 science-fiction writers under the age of 40 by The Guardian UK. His work has appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade, and Vice Magazine.

Featured Titles

The Boy with the Chainsaw Heart
A Bio-Mech pilot drafted into Hell’s army must fight his way through a surreal afterlife in order to save his wife from slavery.
Dark and pulpy.

Neverday
The story of what happens to society after everyone in the world gets trapped in a never-ending time loop.
Dark and dystopian.

Stacking Doll
The story of a man who falls in love with a Russian nesting doll.
Dark and surreal.

Parasite MIlk
A travel show producer is infected with deadly sexually transmitted parasites after visiting a brothel on an alien planet.
Body horror science-fiction comedy.

The Big Meat
A kaiju tribute novel that explores the surreal aftermath of a giant monster attack.
Dark and gritty.

Spider Bunny
A group of college kids get trapped inside a deranged children’s cereal commercial from the 1980’s.
Creepy and absurd.

Exercise Bike
The story of a man who transformed himself into a human exercise bike and the woman who is forced to ride him.
Absurd body horror.

The Terrible Thing That Happens
In a post-apocalypse world, a small community of scavengers must survive by looting a grocery store that’s stuck in a time loop.
Dark and surreal.

The Tick People
In a city where people live like parasites on the back of a giant animal, a professional sadness-maker discovers that his soul mate is a hideous mutant.
Dark and surreal.

Hungry Bug
In a world where magic exists, spell-casting has become a serious addiction.
Gritty and pulpy.

Clusterfuck
A bunch of douchebag frat boys get trapped in a cave with subterranean cannibal mutants and try to survive not by using their wits but by following the bro code.
Comical and violent.

Quicksand House
Two children who have never met their parents before, even though they live in the same house with them, must fight for survival once their nursery becomes uninhabitable.
Dark and Dystopian.

Village of the Mermaids
An eccentric doctor travels to an isolated village of carnivorous mermaids to investigate a new disease spreading through the herd of human livestock.
Dark and Dystopian.

Cuddly Holocaust
A tale of survival set in a world where most of the human race has been exterminated by vicious stuffed animals.
Apocalyptic and brutal.

The Morbidly Obese Ninja
A 700 pound killing machine must go against his corporate employers in order to save a terminal child.
Pulpy and fun.

Crab Town
A bizarre bank heist set in a radioactive post-nuke ghetto.
Dystopian and relevant.

Zombies and Shit
It’s Battle Royale meets Return of the Living dead in a fight to the death game of survival where twenty contestants are put against each other in the middle of the zombie wasteland.
Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.

Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland
A Wonderland Book Award-winning novel about a three-armed man who finds himself in the middle of a war between a gang of road warrior werewolves and mutants from a dystopian version of McDonaldland.

Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.

The Cannibals of Candyland
A man finds himself imprisoned in an under ground world populated by child-eating mutants made of candy.
Erotic and horrific.

A parody of cabin in the woods horror stories where the victims turn out to be far more deranged than the mutant killers who hunt them.

Campy and fucked up.

The Egg Man
It is a survival of the fittest world where humans reproduce like insects, children are the property of corporations, and having a ten-foot tall brain is a grotesque sexual fetish.
Dark, dystopian, and ugly.

Cybernetrix
A dark and bizarre parody of the movie Tron where a game world and our world bleed together into one reality.
Pulpy and awesome.

The Faggiest Vampire
A bizarro children’s book about two vampire rivals competing in a mustache contest to determine which one is the faggiest.
Cute and relevant.

The Ultra Fuckers
A landscaper and a trio of Japanese punks find themselves stranded in a suburban gated community that seems to go on forever.
Nightmarish and absurd.

Adolf in Wonderland
Nazis from an alternate world of absolute perfection go down the rabbit hole into a dark surreal world of chaos and imperfection.
Absurd and horrific.

Bizarro Starter Kits

Praise for Carlton Mellick III

"If you like satires which are highly imaginative, subversive, gory, funny as hell and completely surreal CM3 may be your literary messiah."

—Ricardo Gonzalez Del Valle

"CM3 is the most imaginative writer since Lethem and Vonnegut. Different, and absolutely thought provoking..."

—Daniel McCreary

"Carlton Mellick creates fascinating and intricate worlds out of meat, slime, sexuality, wire, and the kind of nightmares that make you laugh when you wake up."

—Jemiah Jefferson

"Brilliant writing that oozes into your skull and melts your brain like a box of a zillion crayons."

—Idiot Alien Thought Creature

"His books are from another universe."

—Cameron Pierce

"Mellick is smarter than the dumbness he tries to coat his writing in; you feel like you're reading a comic or watching MTV - but that underneath there is something deeper and smarter than the cartoonish presentation before your eyes."

—Euchrid

"Through childlike narration Mr. Mellick can present to his reader some of the most curious and knee-slapingly hysterical blaspheme."

—Ian David McGowen

"There is depth behind his simplistic prose, and humor all around it. What at first seems unsophisticated quickly becomes a firm identity to the characters, and you realize the intelligence behind the naivety. Yes, it's all on purpose, and you've just been had!"

—Schtinky

"Mellick has definitely joined the ranks of the bizarre literary geniuses such as Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, and Vonnegut."

—Charles Glover

"Mellick's imagination is boundless, and his writing truly shows this. His characters, plot, and writing style are original, enjoyable, and inspiring."

My new book, The Boy with the Chainsaw Heart, is now available. After my last couple of books, Stacking Doll and Neverday, I wanted to do something a little more on the action adventure side. Something set in the afterlife. Something that I could really sink myself into and lose myself for days at a […]

My new book, NEVERDAY, is now available. This is one that I’ve been talking about for almost a decade now. It’s my version of the time loop trope made popular in the movie “Groundhog Day” but instead of focusing only on a single character this story explores what would happen to society if everyone in […]

STACKING DOLL Stacking Doll is the story of Benjamin Hammond, a young man who is in love with a Russian nesting doll. But in this world, nesting dolls are not just antique wooden toys. They are a race of people known as Matryoshkans, a subspecies of human who are born with a very peculiar abnormality—they […]

My new novella, Parasite Milk, is now available. PARASITE MILK Irving Rice has just arrived on the planet Kynaria to film an episode of the popular Travel Channel television series Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern: Intergalactic Edition. Having never left his home state, let alone his home planet, Irving is hit with a severe case […]

My newest book, The Big Meat, is now available. This is my tribute to the kaiju genre. I hope you check it out. THE BIG MEAT The creature was finally dead. After months of fighting it, trying desperately to stop it as it rampaged across the American countryside, turning city after city into a landscape […]

My new book, SPIDER BUNNY, is now available. This one is a tribute to the unintentionally terrifying children’s commercials of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I hope you check it out. SPIDER BUNNY Only Petey remembers the Fruit Fun cereal commercials of the 1980s. He remembers how warped and disturbing they were. He remembers the lumpy-shaped […]

My new book “Exercise Bike” is now available. EXERCISE BIKE There is something wrong with Tori Manetti’s new exercise bike. It is made from flesh and bone. It eats and breathes and poops. It was once a billionaire named Darren Oscarson who underwent years of cosmetic surgery to be transformed into a human exercise bike […]

My new book “The Terrible Thing That Happens” is now available. THE TERRIBLE THING THAT HAPPENS “A new spin on the post-apocalypse genre. One you won’t soon forget.” –Garrett Cook, author of A God of Hungry Walls There is a grocery store. The last grocery store in the world. It stands alone in the middle […]

15 years ago, my first novel SATAN BURGER was published. When it came out I really didn’t expect it to do well. I wrote it for fun, just for myself, not expecting anyone would ever even read it. I mean it’s basically just about a group of 20-year-olds who get jobs working at a Satan-themed […]

My new book, “Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes,” is now available. EVERY TIME WE MEET AT THE DAIRY QUEEN, YOUR WHOLE FUCKING FACE EXPLODES Ethan is in love with the weird girl in school. The one with the twitchy eyes and spiders in her hair. The one […]